The lines etched into Mana Laxmi Shakya’s face look like they could have been traced from the bunched-up contour lines marking her Himalayan home on a map. She has been aged beyond her 66 years by the countless treks she has made up and down the slopes of Nepal, collecting water almost every day since she was six.

Nigalopani, the village where she was born, looks out on snow-covered peaks that cut like crystal into blue skies. But for Shakya the landscape is one of hardship, not beauty: two or three times a day she has to collect water from a spring, carrying a metal pitcher in a basket on her back.